Sept. 22–With the state’s prison population shrinking rapidly by order of the U.S. Supreme Court, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is scaling back operations and issuing pink slips to many prison guards and parole agents next week.

The downsizing comes a year after Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment plan took effect, when the CDCR handed off the supervision of certain low-level inmates and parolees to county sheriff’s deputies and probation officers.

Layoffs are to take effect Oct. 30, but it remains unknown how many employees would be affected.

As of June, CDCR was overstaffed by 472 corrections officers and 148 parole officers, according to charts posted on its website.

That includes 110 corrections officers at the state prison in Lancaster and 46 parole officers throughout Los Angeles County.

Employees received a letter in June saying they had been given “surplus status” because “CDCR has more employees in (their) classification than it has vacancies.” It also advised them to seek out other jobs within the state or elsewhere.

The number of surplus employees fluctuates with every transfer, resignation, retirement and firing, so the final count of layoffs will not be known until Oct. 30.

Ryan Sherman, spokesman for the 32,000-member California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said the union hopes the layoffs will be kept to a minimum.

“We don’t have an issue with the fact that

because the inmate population is dropping, there’s going to be a need for fewer officers,” Sherman said.

“The caveat is that we want to make sure they don’t cut too many.”

“Our concern is that staff cuts won’t adversely affect the safety of the prisons, the safety of the public, and the safety of the staff that remains,” he added.

Sherman warned next month’s wave of layoffs will be followed by several more, as the state scrambles to comply with the Supreme Court order to reduce the prison population to 110,000, or 137 percent of capacity, by June next year.

“We’re very concerned,” he said. “We’re working with the administration to make the impact on people’s livelihoods as minimal as possible.”

Sherman added the average salary of a corrections officer is about $60,000-$65,000, while that of a parole officer is about $80,000.

Luis Patino, a spokesman for the CDCR, said operations are being scaled back — not eliminated altogether.

“It’s been well-documented and well-understood that we’re reducing the number of prisoners by order of the Supreme Court,” he said. “Because of that, the workforce both in prisons and in the Parole Division will be downsized.”

“We’re still going to continue to supervise — once they’ve been released from prison — the more hardened offenders who have the more serious offenses, so parole will continue to function,” he added. “But there will be fewer parolees to supervise than before and, as a result, there will be some readjustment in our workforce.”

Parole offices in Panorama City and Inglewood will be shuttered at the end of October. Another closure, in Long Beach, is scheduled in March.

Several other parole offices are merging, according to the website of the Parole Agents Association of California.

Patino said, “In making our decisions, CDCR is keeping public safety foremost in mind, evaluating the projected number of parolees we’ll be supervising in the future, taking into account their criminal histories, and looking for the most efficient and cost-effective manner to protect public safety while saving taxpayer dollars.”

When the Supreme Court ruled in May last year that severe overcrowding resulted in cruel and unusual punishment of inmates, California’s prison population was at about 140,000.

As of this week, that number is down to about 123,000 inmates.

At its all-time high in 2006, the prison population was 173,000.

When the governor implemented his realignment plan almost exactly a year ago, CDCR supervised 105,000 parolees. That number has shrunk to about 65,000.

The realignment plan called for sending inmates sentenced on or after Oct. 1, 2011, with nonviolent, nonserious and nonsexual offenses to county jails instead of state prisons.

It also put county probation officers, instead of parole officers, in charge of supervising inmates released on or after Oct. 1, 2011, if their last offense was nonviolent, nonserious and nonsexual.

Brown estimated last year that the drop in inmate and parolee populations would save the CDCR $1.5 billion in operating costs by 2014-2015.

Otto Warmbier was arrested in January 2016 at the end of a brief tourist visit to North Korea. He had been medically evacuated and was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center when he died at age 22.